


Cupcakes Save Anything

by SyfyGeek27



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyfyGeek27/pseuds/SyfyGeek27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth Evans and Arianna Cesan are agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and work alongside the Avengers. It has been six months since the last attack on New York, and everyone has started to relax. Suddenly, Loki returns, and begins to wreak havoc on the town of Los Angeles. The avengers are called in, and shenanigans ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Return

The girl, blond and pretty, danced to the music blaring out of the speakers of the car. The ford mustang was parked on a cliff, overlooking the beautiful city of Washington D.C. The lights blinked down below, the city a picture of any large city, with cars, bright lights, and loud music to prove it. The car sat off of the road, by a wide margin, but still not in any danger of falling off the cliff. It was a clear night, the stars twinkling brilliantly far above the earth. 

The companion, a man with dark hair and eyes, looks at the girl admiringly as she dances in her seat. He leans foreword to kiss her, but is stopped when she pushes him away abruptly.

“Rick! I said no!” She says, almost scolding. He leans back, nodding knowingly, almost as if it was just a game. Rick, stepping out of the car, took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and shook one out. He lit it, and then walked a few steps, not far from the car, and smiled when he heard his date turn the radio back on to full volume. 

Another car screeches around the corner, narrowly missing Rick, and stopping farther down the road. Annoyed, he jogs to it, beginning to yell as he approaches.

“Hey, you son of a bitch! Come out here and face…” he trails off, staring at the man in the car, who was bleeding from the mouth, and then Rick gasps in horror as the man in the car turns to look at him. Noticing the precarious position of the other car, Rick tries to open the door, to rescue the injured man. Horribly, the shaking of the attempts causes the car, a Toyota Camry, to plunge down the hill, flipping over, and guaranteeing the death of the poor man still trapped inside. Stumbling backwards, Rick yells at his date to call the police, but his voice comes out barely louder than a whisper. He turns around, and then feels a huge whoosh of air pass him. He shivers, and turns back around to see what caused the chill. 

The car, the man, and the entire scene of the crime was gone.


	2. Introduction

Silently, the huge Helicarrier glided over the rooftops of the small town, stirring the leaves on the streets into small tornadoes. The clouds flew overhead, grey and lumpy, nearly beginning to rain. Anyone below recognized the warning signs of a storm, and scurried for cover, except for one lone person. She continued walking, seemingly not noticing the weather, or the gusts of wind. Her hair, brown and wavy, hung to the middle of her shoulder blades, and her bangs, when blown up in the wind, revealed a strange, brilliant blue marking on her forehead. The passing strangers didn’t seem to notice her, or speak to her at all. 

Smiling mysteriously, she ducked into a small alleyway, and pressed a small part of her ear. Speaking quietly, she held a hushed conversation with someone through a hidden earpeace, and then walked away, after pulling the earpeace out and crushing it underneath her boot. Her bright red coat, more for fashion than for warmth, she left behind on a nearby house’s fence. After removing the coat, she took off her scarf, gloves, and then the red and grey striped sweater, leaving each item of clothing on a different house’s gate. Finally, she was only wearing a black leather uniform, with accents the same blue shade as the marking on her forehead. 

Rolling her shoulders, she moved faster as the houses began to spread apart, and the town border neared. The clouds darkened, showing the imminent rain that was about to fall. The woman looks up, smiling as she feels the beginning of wetness on her eyelids. She moves her bangs to better cover the mark on her forehead, as they have slid to far to one side. Reaching the border of the town, she slows to a stop, and then stands still. Pulling a small mechanical device out of her pocket, she fiddles with several buttons, and then puts it back into her pocket. The wind over her rapidly picks up, becoming amost stong enough to knock anyone over. Leaves fly up from the street and dance in tornado like formations that both hypnotize and frighten the viewer. 

Suddenly, a ladder seems to lower from the middle of thin air. A man climbs down, skipping every other rung in his hurry to get to the ground. He wears the same uniform as the woman, but instead of having blue highlights, his uniform has subtle purple ones. His sandy hair is short, sweapt up over brilliant blue eyes. He smiles as he approaches the woman with his loping gait, and then once the two are near each other, he hugs her. 

“Ari! We were starting to get worried about you. Why did you think it was a good idea to throw your earpeace out while talking to Fury? He’s going to go ballistic on you when you get inside. Anyway, as Fury was going to tell you before you destroyed Stark material, we have a bit of a situation, and we need everybody to come in. ” He says, turning to the side although keeping one arm around her shoulders. Ari, shrugging and beginning to walk, smiles slightly. She smacks his arm as she replies.

“You know Fury won’t go all that ballistic on me, Clint, I’m to important to the peace treaties between Asgard and Earth. I mean, I am the only person in existence that has parents from both realms, that we know of anyway.” Both of them laugh, enjoying an inside joke that nobody listening in would understand. The two turn towards the ladder, and climb, with Ari going first. Quickly, both Clint and Ari climbed into the cloaked Helicarrier, and then the ladder is retracted behind them. The roaring of the rotors dims down as the Helicarrier leaves, and the leaves finally begin to settle, as the clouds finally let loose the downpour of rain, soaking everything and everybody still not under cover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to dedicate this story to my friends, Emily and Camilla, who convinced me to put this story up. You guys rock!


	3. More Introductions

The music thumped loudly in dim lighting of the New York nightclub. Girls danced in the raised platform in the middle of the room, and waitresses wearing very little weave through the crowds to their customers. Changing neon lights flash behind the bar, as the bartender flips bottles, attends customers, and mixes drinks. Posters from vintage and modern movies line the walls, as do strange trinkets and mementos, such as cowboy boots or an Iowa state license plate. 

Elizabeth Evans, a pretty, young, blonde woman, sat at the bar. Refusing to buy anything, she turned around, and looked around her, taking in the atmosphere of the place. There were about an equal amount of both genders in the room, so she didn’t stand out at all. The only reason someone would notice her over the dancing girls in the center of the room was the slight awkwardness in the way that she held herself, betraying some kind of military training that she didn’t want to show. Trying to relax, she turns back around to the bar, and shrugs when the bartender asks her what she wants again. 

A man walks up behind her, wearing a suit, and leaning on a cane. His breathing is slightly labored, but that disappears as he nears her. His short, receding hair is a sandy brown color, and his eyes are a piercing blue. The way he walks shows a former wound to one of his legs, and when he sits beside her, it is labored and obviously painful. However, only she notices him, as even in pain he remains stealthy and hidden from most of the people he brushes up against.

“Hey there, Coulson. I thought you weren’t allowed out of bed for another two weeks.” Evans says, turning from the bar to look her new companion in the face. He smiles, slightly, and rubs one hand against his left side. His movement shifts his suit jacket, and the end of a gun is briefly revealed until he turns back to hide it. 

“The medical bay can’t exactly keep me strapped to the bed anymore, and this is more important.” Coulson replies to her. A waitress steps in between them to get something from the bar, and both of them lean back, creating enough room. Their conversation, interesting as it was, was put on hold until the waitress left again. After the nameless woman left, the two leaned back together, and continued. 

“What’s more important than healing? We both know that you are needed by S.H.I.E.L.D. Enough that your death would majorly suck, anyway.” She says, scanning the room again. Their organization trained all active agents to be on constant alert, even when on supposed relaxation time. She noticed the sad look on Coulson’s face, and immediately felt bad for her friend. She had forgotten that one of his best friends in the agency, Agent Burwell, had been killed in Loki’s attack six months ago. Hardly anybody remembered him, making her remark about Coulson’s death particularly insensitive. 

Coulson wasn’t the only one to lose friends and family in the battle. Elizabeth’s sister, Sarah, had also died when her coworker, Clint had attacked while being under Loki’s spell. So had a mutual friend of the pair, Agent Andrews. He died when Loki’s second wave of Chitauri had come through the portal. Thousands of other civilians and agents were also either dead or missing, leaving a hole in both the organization, and the majority of the city itself. After six months, the city and S.H.I.E.L.D. itself had only just begun to heal, and move on. 

“The world can survive without me just fine, Agent Evans. It did for a very long time before my birth. Also, when were you planning on telling me about your mission?” Coulson asked, looking at the agent disapprovingly. Evans had been assigned a mission by the director of the agency himself, and she didn’t quite know how to go through with it. The mission offered a lot of prestige, but also a large, frightening chance of failure. However, when the director specifically asks you, you have to at least try. She shrugged in response to his question, trying to evade, while drinking the water that the bartender had put down in front of her. 

Coulson laughed, recognizing the signs of a rookie agent assigned a hard mission. It was almost a kind of initiation ritual, and if the agent successfully completed the mission, than they became active field agents. If they didn’t complete them successfully, the rookies were delegated to some kind of desk job, and made to wait for a few months before another chance (another hard mission) came up. It was a tough policy, but it fostered independent thinking and skill in the active field agents, and the agents with desk jobs completed important jobs that nobody volunteered for. Coulson’s mission had included rescuing a kidnapped asset from a notorious mass-murderer, and somehow, at only twenty years of age, he had succeeded. He was a legend at S.H.E.I.L.D. to the point that new rookie agents, after having strokes of good luck, thanked Coulson instead of thanking their lucky stars. 

“You going to have problems, or can you handle it? What is your mission, anyway?” He pressed, needing to know if his guidance was needed. 

“I can handle it, I’m not the only agent assigned.” Evans stated quietly, standing from the stool. She dropped a few dollars on the bar, and gestured to the door, hidden through the flashing lights and crowd. Coulson nodded, and stood, following the younger agent outside into the cool night air. The stars twinkled as the pair walked down the sidewalk, through the heavily populated city. Both continually checked over their shoulders, and seemingly randomly turned corners. 

The wind picked up, and Evans turned her face up towards the sky. Coulson simply leaned a little harder on his cane, and sighed disapprovingly. Leaves swirled from the gutter, and both agents stand up straighter, and hold their hands toward seemingly empty air. Slowly, both began to vanish, and before long, they were completely gone. The wind died back down, the leaves became still again, and almost nobody had noticed anything. 

 

\--------------

 

Pepper Potts sighed, looking at the next man in a long line of people waiting for her signature. The building permits had been in both her and Stark’s name, so any questions the builders had came first to her and then to Tony. Oh, there were a lot of questions. Everything from the kind of glass for the nearly three hundred R&D departments and offices, to the kind of wood to build the hundred story tower. The only fun questions to answer were the questions about the living quarters that the two of them were setting up.

None of the avengers had reconnected after the post-battle briefing, each having gone their separate ways. Dr. Banner had come back to what was left of the tower, before deciding to return to his wandering ways. Tony had planted an experimental tracker somewhere in his belongings, although it seemed to cut out and in. The GPS locater showed him as being somewhere in Indonesia, but nobody had been able to locate him. Being assasins, both S.H.I.E.L.D. agents hadn’t left a trace when they went back to wherever they came from, and Thor was busy in his own world, fixing the bifrost and giving Loki a hopefully fair trial. Steve had gone off on his motorcycle, and nobody had heard from him, either. 

A few days after Banner had left, Tony had bounded out of the lab in the Malibu house where they had been staying. He had looked at her with his unresistable puppy-dog eyes and had convinced her to rebuild the New York tower with floors designed for each of the other team members. Noticing after the fact that Tony had convinced her to do something, Pepper had been the one left to organize the getting of supplies and preferences of all of the members. She couldn’t deny the wisdom of creating a place for the other team members to stay between missions, and decompress. 

Nonetheless, It had taken the past six months to even get close to completion. Most of the rooms and floors were completed, they were just waiting for the final touches to show up, for instance, the complicated training and workout equipment for the gym hadn’t all shown up yet. Most of the more normal equipment, such as treadmills and pull-up bars had already arrived and been set up. The tower was mostly complete, enough to live in, and whenever people showed up, they would be welcome. 

Suddenly, Tony bounds out of the newly arrived elevator. He continues toward Pepper, infectuous energy creating the effect of a hurricane going through the room. She fights down an urge to wince, knowing that his energetic moods were never a good sign. Tony usually needed some kind of help, had a really weird job for her to do, or was just going to make her day more complicated.

"Pepper! Hey, can you plan a little get-together for us? It's the six-month anniversary of the battle! Oh, and by the way, tell that annoying workman to quit using my elevator, it stinks all the time now. Also, how far are we on the finishing of the gym? I was going to call the emergency phone that I gave Steve, but then I realized that he probably would need it. I'm building something very secret, very hush-hush, so nobody, and I mean nobody, is allowed down into my lab! Well, they aren't anyway, but just as an extra precaution, nobody-nobody is allowed now. Got that JARVIS? Nobody!" He turns around, not even waiting for Pepper to answer the four or five questions he had just asked, and vanished back down the elevator. He was obviously hyped up on caffiene, as he never talked that quickly and rapidly otherwise.

Pepper shakes her head, and turns back to the line of workers waiting to ask her questions. She rubs her forehead again, and then asks the next person in line, 

"What do you need? My signature?"

Back to work, never to finish. Pepper laughs inside her head, and resolves to find the Avengers, if only to get someone else to help her manage both Tony, and Tony's Company.

 

\-----------------------

 

Steve stood at the base of the huge memorial, and looked up. The names went on and on, blurring together in strands of white memories. He had known several of them, but most were simply men that he had never met, that had died serving their country. He was touring the country, all of the big cities, visiting every one of these memorials that he could. It was his way of coping, coping with the fact that everyone he had known was either dead or in old folks’ homes. 

Steve had tried to track down his old team, but the files that S.H.E.I.L.D. had given him weren’t very clear. The ones that he did manage to track down were mostly dead, or dying. This trip, which he didn’t tell anyone about, was to try to shake the feeling that he had been having since he woke up. It was to try to stop feeling old, and out of his depth. It had helped, as he had gotten more used to certain things, such as cell phones, texting, and the sheer amount of cars on the roads these days. However, he probably wouldn’t ever be used to certain things such as the rudeness of people, or how the girls dress nowadays. 

Suddenly, His new, still mostly un-used phone, rang. Looking down at his pocket surprisingly, he backed up, and continued to walk farther down the pathway next to the memorial. Several people he passed were talking on their cell phones, and didn’t even have the courtesy to move away from the other people trying to pay their respects. Steve was determined not to become one of those people, so he continued on. Once he was a polite distance away, he turned back to the phone, and carefully pressed the “answer” button, on the screen. A loud, excited voice could be heard, even before Steve put the phone to his ear.

 

“I don’t know, alright? Let the guy answer the phone before you pile the questions on!” An exasperated voice came across the line. Steve half-smiled, recognizing the voice as one of the people that had pulled him out of the ice. This was both a good and a bad thing, as the organization had promised to only pull him in if there was a large enough problem to need the team again. The last time that had happened, almost the entire city of Manhattan had been destroyed. He both desperately wanted S.H.E.I.L.D. to call, to get him back into the saving-people business, and for them not to call, to let him continue living a small, and unnoticeable lifestyle. It seemed as though only his first wish would be followed.

“Excuse me, but do you need something?” Steve interjected into the argument that was about to take place on the other side of the line. He had forgotten that most people didn’t hear when the other side answered. He smiled at the abrupt silence on the call, and then waited for the voice to answer again.

“Yes, is this Steve Rodgers?” The voice answered, sounding much more nervous and apprehensive now. The woman was obviously some kind of fan of his, a notion that Steve had never truly gotten used to in the past, and was still adjusting to in the present. He wanted to say something to put the agent at ease, but could think of nothing. Steve’s only response was to reply that it was indeed he on the phone with her.

“We, sorry, hold on a sec,” and a loud thump was heard over the phone. Steve pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it, almost as if the distance would help the confusing sounds coming from it to make sense. He shrugged, and placed the phone back against his ear. Several people at the memorial were looking at him now, so he turned his back, and continued to walk towards his motorcycle, in the parking lot. 

“Restarting the earlier sentence, we need to meet with you, Captain Rodgers.” The woman said, her voice loud and clear through the phone, not muffled, interrupted, or exasperated. Steve could only think of the time that he had been calling an old friend, and Tony had been trying to insert himself into the call. He had also accidently talked through the beginning of the call, and then had sounded exasperated, until he had shoved Tony away, and walked into his room. The thump he had apparently made his friend hear was the door to his room closing, and then when he sat down at his desk. The agent probably had dealt with another agent in a similar manner, and was now in a room by herself. 

“Why should I meet? I’m in the middle of a good five months of leave. I’ve only been off-duty for two months.” Steve said, trying to not have to go back in. He did have another three months of off-duty time, and he had planned out the rest of the trip. Not wanting to stop in the middle of his tour, he was going to try to not have to be called in, if he could help it.

“According to our records,” the woman said, in a slightly demeaning tone, “you’ve been traveling road-trip style around the country, seeing all of the memorials of the war you disappeared during.” Steve was shocked that the woman could be demeaning about something in his life, not hers, and was about to say so. However, the woman continued before he could. 

“Do you really want to spend your life that way? You’ve been given a great gift, Captain, to live in a world that didn’t exist yet when you were born. Why would you waste that great gift on seeing memorials of the past?” Steve almost had an argument, but couldn’t quite come up with it, before realizing that the woman had hung up on him. Her words echoed in his head, and he wondered if there was some truth to them. He had been given a chance to live in the “future”, and here he was, looking at relics from the past. However, at the same time, without any reminders of the past, he wondered what would happen to himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! I'm just starting writing, and this is a first go at stories. I hope you enjoy it, and just to let you know, Elizabeth and Arianna are my original characters. Everything else belongs to marvel. Oh! The story is based on the avengers and marvel movies up till now, as I have never read the comics. I hope you like it!


End file.
